Thursday, November 27, 2008

EVIL LEX: I was just about to ask you the same question. I dropped half the lab on you and Miss Sullivan. And here you stand.

CLARK: I was lucky.

EVIL LEX: Don’t be modest, Clark. We both know you’re much more than that. It all makes sense now. That first day on the bridge when we met. How you were able to save me when my car went into the river. All the other miraculous times you appeared in just the right place at just the right moment. Almost as if you possessed powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men. You’ve lied to me for years, Clark. But now I know your secret.

CLARK: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

EVIL LEX: Don’t! I saw you after the explosion. You lifted half a ton of concrete like it was nothing. I should have figured it out a long time ago. All the pieces were there. I was just blinded by friendship. A factor that’s been removed from the equation.

EVIL LEX: Sort of. I mean, I couldn’t really be sure what would happen to me if I killed him, so I tucked him away where I could keep an eye on him. Maybe torture him a little when I’m feeling blue.

CLARK super-speeds across the five or six feet between him and EVIL LEX. CLARK is instantly on top of EVIL LEX, his fingers wrapped tightly around his throat.

CLARK: Where is he? Where is he?

Suddenly CLARK gasps for breath. CLARK collapses to the floor at the feet of EVIL LEX.

EVIL LEX: What’s the matter, Clark? You look a little sick. Just like back in the lab when you were with the other me. When he opened the safe door and exposed you to meteor rock.

We see that EVIL LEX has a small, lead ring case in his hand. The case is open. We see a ring inside. The ring has a piece of green meteor rock mounted on it. The meteor rock is glowing bright green, sapping all of CLARK’S strength. EVIL LEX removes the ring from the box and puts it on a finger of his left hand.

EVIL LEX: Every man has a weakness, Clark, no matter how superhuman he may be. I’ve embraced my destiny. Now embrace yours. We could forge a new future together.

CLARK: I’ll never join you.

EVIL LEX: Yes, you will. Or everyone you love will suffer.

EVIL LEX punches CLARK. CLARK tumbles backward out of the barn’s second floor window and falls to the ground below. CLARK’S parents, MARTHA and JONATHAN, run from the house to the barn. They kneel next to CLARK.

MARTHA: Oh my God, Clark! You’re bleeding!

EVIL LEX walks out of the barn. He is still wearing the Kryptonite ring. And now he is carrying a pistol, also in his left hand.

EVIL LEX: I’ve got to hand it to you guys. I mean, keeping something like this a secret must have required an impressive ability to obscure the truth. Maybe the Kents and the Luthors have something in common after all.

JONATHAN sees the ring glowing on Evil Lex’s hand. Evil Lex notices that JONATHAN has seen the ring.

Pete Townshend also got edited out of yesterday’s cartoon, but I don’t feel too bad about that because I featured Pete back in a story I told during Marianne Faithfull week. I spelled his name wrong, but he nonetheless had a featured cameo.

Yeah, so, anyway, last weekend, Sunday afternoon, I fired Doris Day and replaced her with Lindsay Lohan.

I’m guessing I incurred a heck of a lot of bad Karma over that so I’m trying to make things right by giving Doris Day a whole post to herself.

When I did the pencil layout for yesterday’s cartoon, in fact even when I started to ink the lettering, I had been planning on using a different caption. The caption in the original rough was: “An Al-Qaida spokesman shocked the world by announcing they would end all global fighting if the West would create a YouTube video of Pete Townshend kissing Doris Day.”

I really liked that caption.

It’s absurd. It’s bizarre. And it’s a very obscure reference to a real bit of pop culture trivia. On Pete Townshend’s 2006 album (well, Who album) “Endless Wire” he includes a song where he dies and goes to heaven and meets various dead celebrities. He included Doris Day among the dead celebrities. He wasn’t being cruel, he’s just a British guy who isn’t completely up on American life and he didn’t know Doris Day was still alive.

So, I liked the original caption because it combines absurdity with obscurity and achieves, I think, a cool kind of truly pointless silliness. However, after giving it a lot of thought I decided it was simply too absurd, too obscure, too pointless.

I once made a reference to Townshend when I was talking to someone who is now in her early twenties and she had no idea who I was talking about. Poor Pete.

I don’t mind being obscure, but I generally prefer people at least to have an idea of what I’m talking about.

So I fired Doris Day and Pete Townshend and replaced them with two people who seem to be in the papers every day, Al Gore and Lindsay Lohan. I think the new caption is still absurd. It’s not really obscure but I think it’s still silly. And silly is always enough for me.

*

So today is Doris Day Day.

Doris Day is an interesting person.

She became famous as a singer during the big band era. That was a very interesting time. A person could make the case—I won’t try to make it here—that the rise of radio as a mass-medium combined with big band music marked the very start of celebrity driven pop culture in the particular form that we know it today. Vaudeville of course had been around for generations. But as popular as Vaudeville entertainers may have been, they were regarded by the general populace as fringe people, low-lifes. On the other hand, the front men of the big bands, the band leaders, were regarded generally as more-or-less respectable and became very influential. Someday I will have a lot more to say about the big band era and band leaders (if nothing...discontinuous... happens to me, like getting taken away by aliens or some such thing).

Doris Day is also the only person I know who is tangentially connected to both the Kennedy Assassination and the Manson helter skelter killings. It is a weird, acausal connection, but that is perfect Goblin Universe stuff.

The very first network broadcast of news from that day in Dallas occurred over the ABC radio network. At the time the news broke, the network had been playing Doris Day’s cover of “Hooray for Hollywood.” Doris Day singing about Hollywood got interrupted so the ABC newsmen could tell the world about Kennedy getting shot.

The house where the Manson helter-skelter murders took place was actually owned by Terry Melcher, Doris Day’s son. Manson—so the accepted story goes—was furious with Melcher because Melcher, a music business executive, had declined to record Manson’s music. Manson sent his followers to Melcher’s house to to kill Doris Day’s son but apparently didn’t know that Melcher had rented the house to Roman Polanski. And that’s how Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, and her friends came to be murdered. They were home in the house belonging to Doris Day’s son.

That’s almost certainly not the truth, the whole truth and nothing-but-the-truth about the helter skelter murders. However, like the Kennedy Assassination, I strongly suspect we will never know what really happened. Unless somehow people learn to tap into the Akashic records. And I haven’t completely given up on that.

The movie, made by former cartoonist [!] Frank Tashlin, is one of my favorite films of all times. It is exactly the kind of thing that I love. It brings up serious issues—the space program, national security, cold war spying, love & romance—but all the serious elements are reduced to farce and silliness and absurdity. (Dom DeLuise as a would-be vicious spy who is hopelessly hapless and nice attempting to torture Doris Day?!)

Beyond just being kind of silly, the film features Doris Day being kind of sexy. She has scenes in a mermaid outfit [!] and although she never appears in a bikini, Rod Taylor sends her a bikini after he accidently strips off her mermaid outfit [!] while fishing. Doris Day holds up the bikini and for that second, at least, viewers get to picture Doris Day in a bikini.

Those were the days. Can anybody in today’s world even imagine that a woman could strike a sexy pose just by holding a bikini?

Those were the days. And Doris Day was pretty damn cool.

So, I’m making today Doris Day Day here on the blog. And I’ll end this post with Doris Day singing the theme from “The Glass Bottom Boat:”

All aboard, all aboardOn the glass bottom boatIt's the greatest show that was ever afloatTake a ride on the tide with the guide and seeThe way out wonders of the deep blue sea

The deep blue sea, the deep blue seaThere's a lot to see, in the deep blue seaThe sailfish sail and the blowfish blowCockles & mussels, alive-alive-o

The hermit crab, he lives aloneYou can't even get him on the telephoneThe halibut's eyes turn up and inHe don't know where he's going,But he knows where he's been

The deep blue sea, the deep blue seaThere's a lot to see in the deep blue seaThe glass bottom boat, you will agreeCan show you the magic of the deep blue sea

Spiney crabs and white fish tooWill all be there, what a hullabalooWith so many fish upon the seaThere's hardly room for a fat sardine

The deep blue sea, the deap blue seaThere's a lot goin' on in the deep blue seaOh life on the glass bottom boat is great(I'm the captain) You could be a mate

Now the turtle is slow, but not so dumbHe has his own condominiumA bluebird oyster was caught with "foyle"He "swoyre" he didn't even know the "goyle"

The deep blue sea, the deep blue seaThere's a lot to see in the deep blue seaThe glass bottom boat, you will agreeCan show you the magic of the deep blue sea

All aboard, all aboardOn the glass bottom boatIt's the greatest show that was ever afloatTake a ride on the tide with the guide and seeThe way out wonders of the deep blue sea

Monday, November 24, 2008

Friday, November 21, 2008

So the strange rumors now are that Paris Hiltonis actually older than people suspect.Seriously older. And the strange rumors noware that Paris Hilton has played a larger rolein shaping the modern world than anyone knows.Seriously larger. I don’t normally poston silly internet fads and speculations —I’ve said nothing about Diet Coke and Mentos —but since this is the twenty-first of NovemberI’m going to say something about this one partof the strange new Paris Hilton mythologies,the part about Paris Hilton in Camelot.

*

Proponents trying to win over hearts and mindsto the strange new Paris Hilton metaphysicsoften start with an incident I’ll be quick with.I’ll be quick with this because if you dwell on ityou can almost start to see a kind of logicto a premise that’s best kept inconceivable.When you talk about the Bay of Pigs Invasionit’s not a profound suspension of disbeliefto see Paris Hilton as the guiding light there.In our minds we can almost hear Paris saying,“Send some Navy boats over that way. Tell the men —Oh, never mind. You know, Cuba’s so yesterdaynow that all the casinos have closed. Tell the menjust to come home and let the Cubans settle things.”Paris Hilton is as good an explanationas anything for that whole sequence of events.But just because you can connect the dots and seea cartoon drawing of Paris Hilton winkingthat doesn’t mean she really was back there winkingat Kennedy and telling the man what to do.It’s always good to remember there are otherpossible explanations. Paris explains things,but there are other explanations possible.

*

Paris Hilton believers, strange new scientists,have a refreshing kind of honesty to them.They don’t even attempt to cherry-pick data.They may start with a strong case, the Bay of Pigs, butthey don’t shirk from discussing the Missile Crisiseven though it lacks the Bay of Pigs’ black slapstick.And that’s really all that needs to be said right here.The Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved withoutthe kinds of scenes you’d expect to see if Parishad been winking, telling Kennedy what to do.No nuclear missiles launched accidentally.No bombers dropped their nuclear bombs by mistake.Heck, no armloads of un-ordered pizzas were sentlate at night to Premier Khrushchev at the Kremlin.Paris Hilton believers, strange new scientists,are erudite and overwhelm you with details.They see Paris at work in every little thing.But the broad strokes of the Missile Crisis eventsare not painted in bold, bright, Paris Hilton pink.

*

Efficacy comes up, too, that day in Texas.The Kennedy assassination succeeded.If Paris Hilton had been there as a playerwould any of the bullets have hit Kennedy?I’ve seen the photographs, the stills and movie framesenlarged, computer processed, computer enhanced.What’s there, in the splotchy grain, light pulled from shadow?I don’t believe, not for one hot Dallas second,that Paris was the shooter on the Grassy Knoll.I don’t believe Paris was there, made up, in drag,running everything as the Walkie-Talkie Man,sending signals by way of the Umbrella Man.I’ve seen the diagrams. I’ve seen the measurements.I’ve seen everything interpreted by experts.They see Paris at work in every little thing.But I just remind myself that Kennedy died.If Paris Hilton had tried to kill KennedyI think Oswald would have fallen out a window,Grassy Knoll Man would have shot himself in the foot,and the secret agents throughout Dealey Plazawould have started hitting each other with cream pieswhile Kennedy waved and then drove away unharmed.

*

In fact the main reason this thinking caught my eyeeven though it never did win my heart and mindis the notion that Paris Hilton is sittingin the captain’s chair, commanding forty-five yearsof intensive research into Kennedy’s death.Paris explains things. Forty-five years of work goneand still nobody knows who murdered Kennedy.Forty-five years later. Endless theorizing.Endless articles, books, legal machinations.Forty-five years later and still nobody knowswho ordered the killing, who carried out the act.Totally void results are what you would expect,what you’d predict, if Paris were the Captain Kirkof the assassination research enterprise,if Paris were doling out the research dollars,if Paris were deciding who would research what,if Paris were defining which results would count.Forty-five years of toil. Totally void results.Not to mention the endless, mindless blind alleys:“Look, you can see the limo driver turn aroundand shoot Kennedy in the head with a handgun!”Not to mention the reasonable things unsaid:“Historically, political deaths oftencome at the hands of a person’s own power bloc,a person’s own former friends feeling badly used.”Forty-five years of toil. Totally void results.I don’t believe it but I wouldn’t be surprisedif Paris worked out plans with her pet Chihuahua.

*

Maybe Paris Hilton is the muse and moverof the contemporary world around us all.Maybe Paris Hilton is the natural Ethat has everyone in the modern world humming.Maybe Paris Hilton is the subtext beneathall our textbooks and teachings, everything we learn.Maybe. Proponents of this, well, cosmologyhaven’t won me over, not my heart or my mind.Their so-called Pink Camelot theories caught my eye,but pink is a bright color. Paris explains things,but there are other explanations possible.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

I have two small items that I think about every year around this time.

The two items are unrelated to each other and they are both kind of trivial and silly. But since I’ve never seen anybody else discuss these two little things in connection with the Kennedy Assassination—not in fringe conspiracy magazines, not in books, not on the internet (and that’s saying something!)—I thought I’d lump them together today and put them out there.

Maybe somebody will find them interesting, even if they are both kind of silly.

“At the Houses of ParliamentEverybody’s talking about the PresidentWe all chipped in for a bag of cement”

Those three lines are one verse from a song written by a very famous musician. The meaning of the lines seems reasonably plain: “Houses of Parliament” means it’s talking about Britain. They don’t have a president there, so it’s probably talking about the president of the US. And “bag of cement” is a fairly well known euphemism for killing someone.

And only one modern president of the US was murdered.

So, these three lines seem to be saying that powerful people in Britain funded the Kennedy Assassination.

As plain as these three lines may be, it is almost inconceivable that the lines are meant to be taken plainly. Yet how else can they be heard?

These lines come from a song called “Junior’s Farm,” written by Paul McCartney during his Wings years. Now Paul generally wrote silly love songs, silly nonsense songs, and some serious music. “Junior’s Farm” certainly seems to be one of his silly nonsense songs. Here are the above lyrics, in context:

You should have seem meWith the poker manI had a honey and I bet a grandJust in the nick of time I looked at his hand

I was talking to an EskimoSaid he was hoping for a fall of snowWhen up popped a sea lion ready to go

It’s one of Paul’s silly nonsense songs. But why would anybody include a verse about one of the most troubling political events of the modern era in the middle of a song about nonsense?

And, pointedly, why would Paul McCartney include a verse about one of the most troubling political events of the modern era in a nonsense song since Paul lived through the whole Manson era, when the nuts were saying the Beatles were slipping secret political messages into their songs, and Paul lived through the whole British Invasion thing, which tin-foil fringe Anglophobes have always built conspiracy theories around, saying it was really a British black-ops attack on American culture in general.

This verse always makes me shake my head. It is certainly not nonsense itself, yet it certainly is in the middle of a nonsense song. I can’t imagine why Paul McCartney wrote it.

“...The bright sun began warming the car’s occupants as they approached the Texas School Book Depository. Atop the building was a large Hertz Rent-A-Car sign containing a digital time and temperature display. In front of the Depository, the limousine slowed to a crawl to make a 120-degree turn onto Elm Street, although turns of more than 90 degrees were prohibited by the Secret Service. The turn was so tight that Greer almost ran the limousine up onto the north curb near the Depository’s front door, according to Depository superintendent Roy Truly. The car continued a slow glide down the incline of Elm into Dealey Plaza...”

That’s a quote from “Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy.” My point is that Elm Street is probably the most infamous street name in US history. It’s the street on which Kennedy was shot. I think almost everyone remembers Elm Street from watching documentaries about that day in Dallas or from reading about that day.

I’ve always been intrigued that filmmaker Wes Craven wrote and directed one of the most popular horror films ever made and that film has the title, “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Now, the accepted back-story of the “Elm Street” title is that it is simply a personal reference from Wes Craven to a street on the east coast near where he, as a very young man, once made a student film.

However I am not sure I believe that.

Wes Craven is a politically-oriented guy. Wes Craven asked Bill Clinton if Clinton would allow him to film his final days in the White House and Clinton granted Craven access to the White House. Wes Craven gave numerous interviews when his film “The People Under the Stairs” was released in which he said he hoped people would understand that he intended the film as an allegory for the Reagan years in the White House.

It is inconceivable to me that anybody who is sensitive to politics could use “Elm Street” without that usage being a conscious reference to the Elm Street in Dallas. But no matter how carefully I look at the plot of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” I can’t decipher any political allegory there, at least not one that seems to be a reference to the Kennedy Assassination.

The title of the film “A Nightmare on Elm Street” makes me shake my head. Wes Craven is an intelligent, careful craftsman and a decent guy. I don’t believe he could have used “Elm Street” as a free-floating allusion simply to his own past or simply as a knee-jerk reference to a generically sad event. However, although I’m usually pretty good at ferreting out hidden meanings, I don’t see any in the film. But I haven’t given up looking.

I do have one kind of addendum to this item. One time I was talking to a Young Person about this. I described the issue, the street name in Dallas, the movie title. They thought about it for a second then said, “Well, you know, sometimes things in real life work backward in a silly way. Maybe the secret service guy who arranged the route of the President’s motorcade in Dallas arranged for the motorcade to go on that street because the guy was a big fan of the movie.”

I had to look carefully at the Young Person’s face. Not only were they serious and not joking, but they were kind of proud of themselves for offering a suggestion that apparently I hadn’t thought of.

Well, I liked this Young Person a lot, so I just smiled and nodded (and, as they say, sighed inwardly) and pointed out that the Kennedy Assassination happened in 1963 and the movie “A Nightmare on Elm Street” came out in 1984 so the secret service guy who planned the President’s route probably wasn’t a big fan of the movie.

The Young Person frowned, not sure whether to believe me. They said, “Are you sure? I thought that movie came out a long time ago...”

Yeah. Well, that’s one of the reasons conspiracy theories are fun to talk about. They are Rorschach tests, and very revealing, in every way imaginable.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Question: How many Kennedy Assassination researchers does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: Just one. Or possibly a well-coordinated team of anywhere from three to twenty-eight highly-trained Kennedy Assassination researchers working with the support of military intelligence groups and the cooperation of local, state and federal government agencies. Or maybe just the one, acting alone.

Question:How many Kennedy Assassination researchers does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer:Twenty. One to write a book about the first light bulb burning out. Three to write books refuting the first book about the light bulb burning out and offering alternative theories. Two to write books revisiting and rehabilitating the original book about the first light bulb burning out. Four to develop computer simulations of the first light bulb burning out. Nine to create a comprehensive database of every news story that was published in the world press on the day the first light bulb burned out. And one to change the light bulb.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Friday, November 14, 2008

Tom Stallard, of the University of Leicester, said: “It’s not just a ring of aurora like those we’ve seen at Jupiter or Earth. This one covers an enormous area across the pole. “Our current ideas on what forms Saturn’s aurora predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright one here is a fantastic surprise.” The image shown on the left is a composite displaying the aurora, illustrated in blue, the planet’s hot interior, rendered in red, and clouds, which appear as black silhouettes. [Saturn’s polar light show mystifies scientists]

I’ve read scientists have observedinexplicable auroraover the north pole of Saturn.Strange lights in someone else’s sky.

We have aurora here on Earth.They’re just particles from the Sunglowing, trapped by magnetismat the fringe of the atmosphere.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

A storm of cars blows into the parking lot.One car like lightning arcs to ground down through me.Afterward when the cars blow past I’m black ash,a shape on the pavement, run through, burned out, fried,never having gotten inside. I need maps,forecasts, parking lot meteorology.

I need a geosynchronous satellitededicated to sending telemetry for driving a supercomputer modelthat generates predictions of when it’s safefor me to make it through certain parking lots.

It’s tempting just to stay out of parking lots.

But sometimes sunlight refracting through the carscreates pretty rainbows. And, you know, sometimesI need to buy new pencils from the craft storeor check out an old book from the library.

Parking lot weather can be terrifyingbut I’m hoping the tools of modern sciencecan get me through these expeditions alive.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

I don’t want to move away (for now) from the topic of paintings based on pop media frames without mentioning David Hockney’s extraordinary book, “Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters.” This is a large format, beautifully illustrated history of photorealism in the fine art world, from before the invention of oil painting into the present. There are also many interesting discussions of the epistemology of images in general. (Apparently four hundred years ago some high Vatican officials enjoyed very detailed paintings of naked young men for the same reasons some high Vatican officials today probably get their porn on Blu-ray.)

It’s a great book. I read through the book, cover to cover, once or twice every year. It’s as interesting the third or fourth time through as it was the first.

*

The most recent Hockney book I’ve read was a retrospective of his drawings.

My favorite works in the book are his colorful pencil and crayon [crayons!] drawings of Celia Birtwell.

When I first read through the book, I just looked at the pictures. Then I went back and read the text. Apparently, I’m guessing, if Hockney were to pick his own favorite images from the book he might not pick images of Celia . . .

“It was incredible to meet in California a young, very sexy, attractive boy who was also curious and intelligent. In California you can meet curious and intelligent people, but generally they’re not the sexy boy of your fantasy as well. To me this was incredible; it was more real. The fantasy part disappeared because it was the real person you could talk to.” — David Hockney

Many have argued that Hockney, in love, captures the intimacy of his relationship with Schlesinger in his drawings. However, as with Hockney’s paintings of him, the drawings should not be confused or conflated with Schlesinger since, in a very real sense, they are not about him. As Peter, Albergo la Flora, Rome (1967) and Peter (1968) make explicit, what the drawings register is Hockney’s active looking at, and possession of, the younger man who is reconstructed in his image. Vision, within this context, achieves the status of an act. Not for Hockney was the benign reciprocity of lovers’ glances.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

In today’s post I’m going to follow-up a little on what I talked about yesterday, specifically how I’m trying to figure out some esthetic theory for thinking about art and entertainment images based on frames from the pop media.

I don’t even have a start, however, so I’m just going to be mentioning some of the kinds of things I’m trying to keep in mind as I attempt to get my thinking in order. After I jot down two or three things I use to get perspective in my thinking, I’m going to put up a quote from Art Spiegelman that provides something like a general framework for how I approach thinking of still images versus moving images (or still images versus extracts from moving images).

(One Art Spiegelman note: There are a couple of conceptual points about “Maus” that I find troubling. I wrote a novel—as yet, of course, damn it, unpublished—that touches on dealing with the Holocaust. Although Spiegelman made some choices that I wouldn’t have made, I have a lot of respect for him as an artist. I wouldn’t have crafted “Maus” the way he did, but there is sincerity in his work that is profoundly moving. It is what art and entertainment should be. By comparison, I would single out, say, Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” as being something else entirely.)

*

When I first posted about paintings based on media frames, I called the post, “The Abandonment Of Meaning.” One of the things I meant by that title was that when an artist or entertainer recycles an image that was composed by a cinematographer or cameraman, takes the image out of context and creates a new context, a great deal of the meaning of the image is lost and very little new meaning is created. The artist or entertainer selects exactly what frame to reproduce, what part of the frame to reproduce, what manner of interpretation to use for the reproduction. These are very real choices that create artistic input. But they are almost trivial compared to the original process of the first composition.

Much of my thinking about the issue of images based on media frames is built around the notion that an artist or entertainer should be the source of meaning, rather than simply [simply?] a commentator. An artist or entertainer should be creating pop culture rather than simply looking around and and singling out what other people do to create pop culture.

This may seem counter-intuitive. It is second nature—even for me when I think about these things—to tend to see movies and television as “primary” sources of culture and entertainment, while just about everything else seems derivative in one way or another. Even when novels or comics come first and serve as the source of a movie or TV production people seem to remember the movie or TV production as much more lasting—for better or for worse—than the source material.

I believe this is an illusion. It is a seductive and persuasive illusion, but I believe it is just an illusion nonetheless.

It is still imagery—carefully crafted by real artists and entertainers—that generates “lasting” art and entertainment. Pop culture pretends this isn’t so. Many artists and entertainers accept the pop culture illusion and devote themselves to creating derivative productions. But a reasonable esthetic theory on this topic should provide a framework for thinking about these things which puts everything in its proper place.

I don’t have such a theory, but this is a general statement on how I’m starting to think of the issue.

*

Here is Art Spiegelman commenting on comics versus the movies:

Unlike many artists, Spiegelman doesn’t see his stories in his head as though they’re movies which he’s capturing on paper. In fact, he says he’s never seen it this way.

“I like movies, but I don’t think they have much to do with comics except that the language is similar, like wide-angle-shot or overhead-shot or close-up. But I don’t see these things as moving pictures, but accretions of pictures. They’re still pictures that never had any other life in my mind. I can see how you can look at a comic and see how it’s like a storyboard for a film. But the more it’s a storyboard for a film, the less it’s a successful comic. Comics are a very specific organization of still images. They suggest time and motion, but they exist as still images. A character on the left of the frame in one panel can, in the next panel, be in the middle and in the third panel be over on the right creating the illusion of a person moving from left to right. But I never saw that as a person walking or tried to figure out how to divide the panels like the frames of a film. I see a kind of patterning, as if you kept the so-called ‘camera’ still with the figure moving across the background. You’d create a pattern that would attract your eye to a certain part of the page and hold it there.

“When I think about comics I always think of full pages and divide them into panels later. And try to find the individual moment that accumulates the full page.”

“There’s so many other factors operating, such as what size and shape panel to use, which is a problem no filmmaker ever deals with because they always have the same ratio of rectangle to work in. And no filmmaker has to think of one frame from five minutes ago still being present in the eye because a film is based on retention from a fraction of a second to a fraction of a second. Comics are based on seeing all those things at once because peripherally you’re always going to see what happens next and what happened before. It’s interesting that Rudolphe Topffer was doing comics that used cross-cutting a good seventy years before the invention of cinema. A lot of cinematic language is actually comics language.

“I find myself influenced by literature and painting. They all play their part. It’s what makes comics an exciting medium, to synthesize and be able to use little bits and parts from other disciplines. So I’m not discounting the influence of film, I just think it’s overrated.”

Monday, November 10, 2008

“Movies, and particularly frame-enlargements, have been in my work what engravings and such were for artists in the distant past, what printed illustrations were for painters like Manet and Van Gogh, what photographs were for Degas and Cézanne and later for Sickert and Bacon. No more and no less.”

I’m not talking about politics and I’m not talking about conspiracy theories.

I talking about art and entertainment images based on frames from the pop media. That is an Audrey Flack oil painting based on a frame from one of the famous film sequences of Kennedy from that day in Dallas. (This isn’t from the Zapruder film. This is from earlier, at the airport, when Kennedy just arrived in Dallas.)

I’ve posted paintings based on media frames before. I’m very intrigued by this stuff.

I’ve posted Karen Kilimnik’s painting based on an old horror film.

Kilimnik does a lot of these things. It was seeing one of her paintings from a frame of the old TV show “The Avengers” that first got me thinking about this. I had never seen such work before, but I gather it has been going on for quite some time in the fine arts world.

And I’ve posted McDermott & McGough’s odd double painting based on a couple of old melodrama films.

Lots of “real” artists do this kind of work.

I don’t really know what to think about paintings like this. I haven’t read or figured out any kind of esthetic theory for images copied from media frames. But, subjectively, every time I’ve seen one of these things from Karen Kilimnik it’s made me smile. And similar stuff by other artists always catches my eye. Even though I can’t put my finger on why I like this stuff, I suspect there is something special going on, something worth thinking about further.

The quote from Kitaj is interesting but not particularly thoughtful. He just passes off the process of using media frames as the contemporary version of artists responding to the culture around them. But everything an artist creates is a response to the culture around him—in one way or another. That doesn’t address why frame-based paintings are so intriguing.

So, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.

And over the weekend I decided to give it a try.

Instead of doing a normal cartoon, I decided to try my hand at creating a more comprehensive image based on a frame from an obscure bit of video. I was going to do a painting, but I simply can’t handle a brush. I did color, but I stayed with stick-based color.

If I were a cool, contemporary artist doing the whole fine arts thing—if I were spending the quiet hours sipping vodka-and-tonics with Karen Kilimnik—I would be doing images like this. If I were a real artist I’d be doing this better than I did over the weekend, but this was still fun to play at. I’m sure I won’t be stealing sales away from the real artists, but I might be trying something like this again and trying to get better. Just for the fun of it.

This even has a long, Karen Kilimnik-type title: “Kari loses an underwire from her bra in the DVD edit of ‘Killer Brace Position’”

Friday, November 07, 2008

DODGER: I’m so sorry for everything. I didn’t mean to hurt you. You have to believe me.

OWEN: It’s okay.

DODGER: I wish I could make it up to you.

OWEN: I know.

DODGER: If I’d known Rich was involved with that girl I wouldn’t have played this stupid joke.

OWEN: What did you say?

DODGER: If I had known Rich was screwing that girl I wouldn’t have talked the others into this.

OWEN: You’re right. You’re absolutely right.

DODGER: I don’t understand.

OWEN: You wouldn’t play some game if you knew Rich was cheating on you.

DODGER: That’s what I just said.

OWEN: You would get back at him.

DODGER: Owen, I’m confused. I don’t—

OWEN: No, you’re not. That’s what you want me to believe. Just like you wanted me to believe that you were off campus when the first IM went out.

DODGER: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

OWEN: Yes, you do. In the chapel you said you ended it with Rich. I don’t think that’s what happened. I think you were still in love with him. I think you knew that girl. And you knew she was still sleeping with Rich. You murdered her. Then you planted the gun. And told me where to find it. I was your guy. From the moment we met. You planned it. The whole thing. You knew I’d shoot him.

DODGER: Owen, that’s crazy.

OWEN: Really? I thought it was the object of the game.

DODGER: Honestly, Owen, even if that were true, who would believe you?

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Right this second as I think up these wordsand write them down clouds are getting thicker.

When I woke up and walked to the back yardthere were patches of black between the clouds.Stars glittered in the sky between the clouds.Aldebaran in Taurus to the west.Betelgeuse in Orion to the south.Regulus in Leo to the southeast.And in the east through the sparse top branchesof the tall tree right across the alleythe planet Saturn, also in Leo.

Saturn’s dimmer than I’ve ever seen it.Saturn now seems about the same brightnessas Regulus. And you wouldn’t look twiceat either star through clouds or through clear skyif you didn’t know the star to the leftwas Saturn, the most beautiful planet.

Last night just after sundown, in the westVenus was the brightest star in the sky.To the left of Venus was Jupiter,largest planet in the solar system,second brightest star in the evening sky.

In the morning sky, now, all the bright starsare south or west. Nothing catches your eyeto the east. Unless you know what is there.Regulus in Leo to the southeastand to the left of Regulus, Saturn.

As I write this dawn is breaking behindthe clouds and the sky between them is blue.The stars are gone. But before, in the dark,I took my telescope into the yard.Through the top branches across the alleySaturn’s still the most beautiful planet.The planet’s rings are almost edge-on now.Almost no light’s reflecting off the rings.But Saturn, the second largest planet,still glows a gem-like golden ochre glow.It’s not deep, rich like topaz, but more likebright sunlight shining on a lion’s fur.

Saturn in Leo, a lion-like gem . . .

It’s a mixed metaphor kind of beautybut maybe all real beauty is like that.

Through trees. Through clouds. Dim. Just anonymous.But when you single out Saturn and look—carry a telescope outside and look—Saturn’s still the most beautiful planet.

And sometimes beautiful things—singled out,looked at carefully—aren’t beautiful.If you single them out and look closelybeautiful things can be terrifying.

But Saturn is a pure kind of beauty.Even if it takes a mixed metaphorkind of attempt to describe the beauty.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

I spent part of yesterday afternoonbrowsing a nearby suburb’s library.The library was a place for votingin that suburb next to my own suburb.

I’d voted early at our city hall.People I’ve talked to said turnout was lowboth at my suburb and the one next door.

When I was browsing the library shelvessome guy tried to vote at a voting boothand managed to knock down the voting booth.The noise echoed throughout the libraryas the voting booth banged against the floorand banged again collapsing on itself.The middle-age guy, the would be voter,stood by the collapsed booth, pen in his hand.He looked at everyone looking at him.He blushed, hapless, suddenly embarrassed.He stammered, apologizing. Workershurried to get the voting booth back up.

I sighed and said to a guy next to me,“He can’t even vote without knocking downthe voting booth and this guy’s vote will helpput the next president into office.”

The guy next to me was excited andtold me nobody’s vote counted becausehe had heard there was so much voter fraudall around the country that the Armytomorrow was declaring martial law.He said he’d learned that browsing on the ’net.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

The neighborhood video storenear my house is closing up shop.The last few days they’ve been sellingtheir entire stock, ten bucks per film.Though I sometimes rented from themI couldn’t bring myself to spendten dollars to own anything,not a comedy, no thriller,not even a monster movie.